KL Donn, $2.99
Contemporary Romance, 2022
Oh, don’t worry, people. Our heroine Nicola isn’t a murderer or a Mafia member — that will be disgusting, as it’s only sexy when a hot hunk does these things.
For the past six months, Palermo Detention Centre has been my life. I screwed up, lost my temper, had another hissy fit, and broke a girl’s nose. It was my last straw. The law decided I was a problem that needed to be confined.
See? She’s a nice person!
Our heroine was purchased by Sandro Cardarelli’s father in some arrangement that probably happened in some previous entry in whatever series His Jailbird belongs to, but again, don’t worry. There is nothing sexy about that arrangement, as she’s treated more like a daughter by Sandro’s parents.
Anyway, this story is about Sandro being asked to pick Nicola up now that she’s out of that detention centre, take care of it, and even throw her a birthday party.
Naturally, the heroine needs to appear as pathetic as ever, so she’s soaked in a thunderstorm — too stupid to find shelter, I guess — when Sandro finds her.
While these two are not werewolves, KL Donn wastes no time bringing up the mate-mate-mate thing the moment Sandro sees this wet and pathetic creature.
After calling her name, and she came to me, I knew from the first look in her eyes that she was going to be mine. It was only confirmed when she asked to see the family tattoo—our pledge to the Cardarelli name. The fact she knew the importance of that mark tells me my father has expectations for this girl and one of his sons.
So, the father buys the girl to pimp her out to one of his sons? Oh, what a romantic!
Needless to say, the romantic component of this story is pretty blah. It’s the standard romance where love is defined by the heroine being a damsel in distress (but she’s sassy, so this means she’s still feminist where it counts) and the hero protecting her, and all this is a sign that they are meant to be together forever.
It’s a romance done with shortcuts, but this is where I scratch my head. Normally, such shortcuts are taken so that an author would focus on steamy and sex scenes to the wazoo. However, this one doesn’t have much heat. Instead, these characters talk a lot, either to one another or in their heads.
Hence, the author could have easily made the characters know one another more organically instead of pushing forth that “I see you — YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY MINE FOREVER!” nonsense. Instead, these characters just dump exposition that is boring and could have been used for said getting to know one another better, which would have made the romance more believable.
The suspense part is tad more interesting, although it’s more of a standard Lifetime movie plot, but again, these people really love to talk, so there’s not much suspense or action. The whole thing is talked out instead of played out, and I don’t get it. Why is the author so allergic to letting me see what is happening? Why does she need to have everything described to me by so-and-so?
Anyway, the author lets her characters talk way too much. As a result, the romance jumps from A to V while skipping all the letters in between and the suspense is like reading a social media post about something that has happened, instead of getting to witness it happen on the pages.
All in all, this is a romantic suspense that doesn’t work as either romance or suspense, and all because the author can’t gag her characters more often.
